


After Ascension

by 27dragons, tisfan



Series: MCU Kink Bingo [54]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alien Sex, Hand Job, M/M, Mild Gore, Oral Sex, Sharing a Body, Threesome - M/M/M, Violence, winter soldier as a separate entity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 05:44:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16550057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/27dragons/pseuds/27dragons, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Howard Stark sent Bucky Barnes to space. Seventy years later, he’s back. And he’s not alone...





	After Ascension

**Author's Note:**

> for MCU Kink Bingo Square I2 - xenophilia
> 
> This story owes a great deal of plot elements from sci-fi stories like: Stargate: SG-1, The Host, Venom, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Contact. We are uber nerds and we love to throw in those little references.
> 
> Also! This finishes off our Kink Bingo Card. So, yay for that.

_Year 571 After Ascension, Mission Log 1990-19_

_The Winter Soldier’s Vessel is dying. We are sending this report as a warning. Do not enter the system known as Sol. The space around the third planetary body is swarming with untagged clutter and satellites. Our  ship is damaged beyond repair and we have crashed on the third planetary body’s moon. We are going to explore, but we currently have no hope of being able to repair either the Vessel or the ship. We are stuck here. Gravity on this moon is enough to hold what remains of our atomic form to the rock. We don’t anticipate a rescue._

Winter Soldier pushed their Vessel away from the control panel with a sigh. Five hundred and seventy one years existing as a not-quite corporeal mass of loosely connected molecules and they were going to spent the rest of eternity on a tiny rock in the middle of one insignificant solar system.

It would have been enough to make them long for death, except they’d eluded death, hadn’t they? Ascended. Become free of the bonds of their physical bodies. Undying. Eternal. Immortal.

Too bad they hadn’t realized how sun-cursed _boring_ that was going to be.

The Vessel reported pain, and it wasn’t in the Winter Soldier’s skills to be able to repair it. Not this time. _Sorry, old friend,_ the Winter Soldier told their Vessel. _You served us well. You will be remembered._

They waited, staying in the Vessel until the very last heartbeat. Not leaving their Vessel alone, they wouldn’t do that, not when the Vessel had served so faithfully. The last breath and the Winter Soldier removed their form from the Vessel. No need for air, now. Or walls. Or food. The Ascended were immortal. It was supposed to have been a blessing.

They slid out of the ship; without a Vessel, they couldn’t pilot it. Or repair it. They were stuck. Might as well see what home was going to be like for the next… ever.

***

_Year 571 After Ascension, Mission Log 1990-20_

_We have found a new Vessel. The Vessel was frozen and inanimate, but contained in a ship. Primitive by our standards, but functional. It does not have the tools or the technology to repair our old ship, but, having reanimated the Vessel, we have decided to attempt to make planetfall._

_The Vessel is_ remarkably _uncooperative._

Tony paused only for a heartbeat on the threshold of his office, and then he continued smoothly, detouring past the desk to the wet bar in the corner. “Fury,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from my favorite spook?”

Fury glowered at him. At least, Tony assumed he did; that was, after all, Fury’s default expression when dealing with Tony.

“Stark,” he growled. “I need you to come in.”

“I told you, Nicky, you can’t afford me.” Tony poured a couple of fingers of scotch. Considered the glass, and added a third finger. He had a feeling this conversation was going to require it. He didn’t offer Fury a drink. Finally fortified, he picked up the glass and turned to face his unexpected and unwanted visitor. “Don’t you have someone to be watching? Someone... not me?”

“I’m always watching you, Stark,” Fury said, demonstrating the lack of humor that had gotten him into Tony’s good books in the first place. “And we need you to come in.”

Tony took a swallow of the scotch, rolling it over his tongue as he eyed Fury, gauging the man’s level of determination. For him to break into Tony’s office in the middle of the day suggested that whatever it was, it was serious. Usually, roaches like Fury only scuttled out in the dark. “Why me?”

“Because it was your father who started it. We’re hoping you’ll have some insight about how to finish it.” Fury tossed a folder onto Tony’s desk. It slid across the polished mahogany, spinning, to end up directly in front of Tony. It was even facing the right way. Tony had to give Fury points for style.

He glanced down at the stenciled cover. “Project Selene?” Tony glanced back up at Fury. Of all the things he’d expected Fury to come to him about, that hadn’t even made the list. Not even the addenda or appendices. “Our initial space travel program? It failed. _Spectacularly._ Lost the pilot, lost the ship, lost the funding.” Tony shrugged. “I think some of Dad’s notes might have eventually made their way to NASA, but they probably just chucked everything and started over, given how terribly everything turned out.”

Fury smiled thinly. “It might not have failed as spectacularly as we previously thought.” He nodded toward the folder. “Read it. The initial report and the new one that was added yesterday.”

Tony froze in the act of reaching for the folder, and stared at Fury, hard.

Fury wasn’t smiling anymore. “I’ll send a car for you at eleven hundred hours. You’ll be on site by oh-two-thirty. Pack a bag; this one will take a few days.”

***

_Year 571 After Ascension, Mission Log 1990-21_

_We are very tired of crashing into things. The Vessel, which calls itself Bucky and objects to being named as Winter Soldier’s Vessel, had emergency protocols, which it engaged against our wishes._

_We believe we might be_ captured _._

_Bucky is concerned that he is both unarmed, and that the ship is not equipped with weapons. What sort of violent primitives have we fallen in with? That he worries for his safety among his own species, that he considers being without weapons to defend himself with a problem. That he considers weapons necessary at all._

_Bucky is not entirely unaware of the services we have given it. The repairs we did to its body, and returning it to its homeworld. It advises that we “let him do th’ talkin’.” We’re not sure we like this world very much._

The _Selene_ was so badly damaged in the two crashes that Bucky couldn’t access the door’s mechanism from his side. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d survived either of the crashes. He barely remembered the first one, a malfunctioning thruster that had sent him careening into the moon, barely enough time to secure himself inside the sleep pod.

There were bangs and crashes outside the _Selene_ and a brilliant line appeared to the left of the hatch. Bucky backed away hastily as the air inside got warm, and then stifling.

There wasn’t a lot of room in the _Selene_ in the first place. Pilot’s chair, the pod, storage for food packs, and a wardrobe sized microcomputer bank, courtesy of Stark Industries.

“Hey, hey, _hey_! It’s gettin’ hot in here!” Bucky yelled, hoping to God that someone could hear him. And that they could speak English. None of the radio transmissions he’d tried had reached anyone.

“Another minute or so and we’ll have a hole big enough for some ventilation!” a voice called back to him. “Hold your horses!” The glowing line grew a little further.

Thank god. Americans. Bucky pushed himself back further.

_What is Americans?_

_I am not talking to the delusion in my head_ , Bucky thought fiercely at it. Which seemed sort of counterintuitive to tell a delusion that he wasn’t talking to it. Since he obviously was. He had to lock his limbs. His delusion seemed to be under the impression that it was something entirely outside and separate of Bucky. And that it had some sort of rights to Bucky’s body. He kept finding himself doing things that he didn’t remember doing. Especially if he’d been asleep, whatever it was, it had more control when Bucky was asleep. And sometimes, it could grab hold of Bucky’s hand or leg, move when Bucky didn’t want to move.

_Fuck, I’ve gone space happy._ Well, Howard had said that some sort of… problems could come up. The human psyche had never been exposed to space. No one really knew what would happen.

The glowing line turned into a glowing circle, and the circle fell outward, revealing... not much. A big room, probably some sort of hangar or lab, mostly done up in white. Before Bucky could really take it in, the hole was obscured by a face.

_Howard_ , Bucky thought immediately, but then -- no. It wasn’t Howard, after all. This man’s eyes were whiskey brown, and his nose was a little too long. His haircut was... odd. Too wild. Whoever he was, he looked at Bucky for a long moment, then looked down, then looked back at Bucky. Someone behind the man coughed, and the man’s eyes rolled expressively. “Let’s get the formalities out of the way, shall we?” he said. “Name, rank, and serial number?”

“Barnes, James, B. Sergeant. 32557038. Who th’ hell are you, you’re not Mission Command. Where’s Carter?”

The man glanced down, then back over his shoulder before looking back at Bucky, and this time, there was a hint of something... sympathetic in his gaze. “Yeah, about that... My name’s Tony Stark, and you’ve been missing for over seventy years, Sergeant.”

Bucky sat down. Hard. If the pilot’s chair hadn’t been directly behind him, he could have fallen straight to the floor. “How… how is that possible? I…”

_We told you. The Vessel was frozen, inanimate. We fixed it, we brought you home._

“I-- I hit my head, I was out for… a few days? It… that can’t be, that--” The world was spinning around him. He had hit his head and when he came to, he ate, and then he fixed the ship, the little voice in his head telling him what to do, and he did it because, because...

_Because you are our Vessel and we brought you home._

“I uh… think I’m gonna upchuck,” Bucky managed to say.

“I’d advise against that,” Tony Stark said. “It’s going to take us another hour or so to cut you free. The ship landed right on the door mechanism. You’re lucky it didn’t kill you.”

The voice in his head eyed the hole. _Tell them to back away._

“Uh, gimme some space, yeah? Spread out a bit, I--” _What are you doing?_ Control over Bucky’s limbs was yanked away, as if the voice -- _We have a name._ \-- had figured out the key to Bucky’s brain. Bucky watched, horrified, as his hand reached for the burning, glowing metal.

_No, no, no, no, don’t--_

There was no pain at all. Bucky grabbed the side of the capsule and pulled, peeling it back like paper off a Christmas present. Rip, tear, shred. There was no blood, no pain, no strain of muscles. Nothing. The thing in his head just took over and tore its way out of the ship like he was Popeye in one of those movie funnies.

_What are you?_ Bucky stared down at his hands like he’d never seen them before.

_We are the Winter Soldier._

Bucky looked around at the people -- some lab somewhere, maybe? There were a lot of people. There were suddenly a shocking number of guns pointed at him.

We _are in a lot of trouble._

***

_Year 571 After Ascension, Mission Log 1990-22_

_There are an astonishing number of Vessels on this planet. We have counted over fifty different Vessels, just of one species. There have been two of another species, low and furry with large teeth. The Vessel, Bucky, calls them dogs. We remain cautiously optimistic that this planet can be colonized._

The great thing about not actually being in Fury’s chain of command was that Tony felt no obligation whatsoever to report his movements to anyone. The makeshift quarantine-slash-brig where they’d stashed Barnes was only guarded by two relatively low-ranking flunkies, both of whom were easily gulled by Tony’s flashy smile and easy patter. He talked his way past them and through the door with laughable ease.

_Someone_ was going to be spending the next week cleaning out toilets with toothbrushes, once Fury found out, but it wasn’t going to be Tony.

Barnes had looked up, startled and wary, at Tony’s entrance. Tony lifted his hands to show them empty of everything except the Project Selene file. “Hey there. Sorry about the hospitality, but they’re easily alarmed. Have they fed you?”

“We ate,” Barnes said, and then shuddered once. “Ain’t quite sure what a Pop-Tart is, an’ I ain’t sure I care for it, neither. Thought those space meals were pretty rank, too. ‘Bout commit murder for a ham sandwich, I’d tell you.”

Tony cocked his head. “You are setting the bar unbelievably low there, but I’ll make sure your next meal is a little more palatable. I have to be honest -- they weren’t planning for a recovery op, here. They thought your ship had just finally had its orbit decay enough to fall back to Earth, at first, except for how no one knew it was out there until about six hours before you landed. So they weren’t ready for... you.” He waved a hand, encompassing all of Barnes. “Mind if I sit?” He pulled out the other chair in the room, spun it around, and straddled it backwards, folding his arms over the back and studying Barnes curiously.

“We don’t think anyone cares what we mind,” Barnes said. He pressed his lips together, eyes slanting to one side like-- like he was listening to someone talk. “Am I under arrest?”

There was that odd dichotomy of language again. _We_ versus _I_. Tony wondered if Barnes had gone a bit space-crazy. But crazy wouldn’t explain the superhuman strength, or the impossible rate of healing. “Your legal status is... tricky,” Tony said carefully. “In that you were declared dead seventy years ago. So you’re not _technically_ under arrest, but... you’re not exactly out on your own recognizance. Fury wants to debrief you.”

“Can’t murder or imprison a ghost story,” Barnes said, giving Tony a wink that seemed almost… flirty, somehow. He reached across the table, fingers brushing the back of Tony’s hand. “You have… you have no idea. How long we have gone without contact. Without touching.”

Touch starvation, that was a thing. “Well, a good seventy years, I’m guessing,” Tony said, quirking a little smile. He extended a hand, palm-up. “Go on, then, if it’ll help.”

Barnes took Tony’s hand in both of his, cupping with one, stroking with the other. “We like these hands, these Vessels. They feel _so much_.” He pulled Tony a little closer, put Tony’s palm against his cheek and let his eyes drift shut. “Space is very, very empty. We’ve been alone for a long time.” When Barnes let him go and his eyes opened, those long lashes were clumped with unshed tears.

“Yeah, I’d imagine so,” Tony said. “So, um. When you say _we_... Who, exactly, are you referring to?”

“We are… we are James Buchanan Barnes, our Vessel. And we are of the Ascended. We are… the Winter Soldier.”

“The... Ascended. What’s that mean?” Probably, Tony should leave this discussion for the psychiatrists and psychologists, but he’d never really been one for caution.

“We were once like the Vessels,” Barnes said, looking down at his hands, twisting the fingers together. “We _mattered_. We don’t matter, not anymore. We ascended, became… more than what we were. And less. Forgive us, we are working with the language that the Vessel has. We have learned much from it. We removed that which makes us ourselves from the Vessel, our own, original Vessel, that we were born from, do you understand?”

Tony frowned, leaning forward, searching Barnes’ face and eyes for some hint of... he didn’t know what. “You’re... what, the... the mind, the _spirit_ , of another race, from--” He waved his hand skyward. “--out there? And you’ve possessed James Barnes’ body?”

“The Vessel calls itself _Bucky_. It is very tired and it is very frightened. It thinks _prisoner_ , it thinks _being disected_. We will not let this happen. We have encouraged it to sleep. We are the Winter Soldier. We came from the stars. We came in a ship that exceeds your arbitrary _speed of light_. We crashed, and we found this Vessel. We repaired it, and we repaired its ship.” The Winter Soldier sat back, looking at Tony with calm, silvery eyes. “Do not think you can hurt us. You cannot. You can only harm the Vessel, and we can repair it. Or take a new Vessel, if you damage ours. We are saying this for the benefit of those we know are listening.”  

Tony glanced up toward the observation camera in the corner, then focused back on Barnes. Or, he supposed, the Winter Soldier.

“This is some _Star Trek_ level bullshit,” he said. “You have to understand, this is a lot to take in. You’re providing the... the strength, the healing?”

“We are,” the Winter Soldier said. “There is… potential, to be unlocked, in the Vessel. Our old Vessel--” the Winter Soldier’s voice cracked, grief and rage and helplessness, “-- our old Vessel died. We couldn’t repair it. Vessels are rare, on the Hive ship, we have only a few, for tens of thousands of Ascended. Having our own Vessel for so long, an honor. The Hive, they fight for the honor of using the Vessel for an hour, a day. We had our Vessel, our _friend_ , for almost two thousand days. Alone, from the Hive to here, to seek new Vessels.”

“New Vessels. New bodies. Like you’ve done with this one.” Tony considered him. “What happens if the person already living in the body doesn’t want to share?”

“It is… a cooperative effort,” the Winter Soldier admitted. “The Vessel did not want to admit what has happened. It thinks _lock us up_ , it thinks _shock therapy_ , it thinks _space-crazy_. Sometimes it thinks _demonic possession_. We encouraged it to sleep, so that it doesn’t have to be frightened. It does not realize you cannot hurt us, you cannot contain us. You can only help us. We are not going to harm anyone, we don’t want to harm anyone. All these Vessels. So many. We counted _fifty_. We don’t want to waste them.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, more for something to say than because he agreed. “But leaving our bodies, that’s... that’s not something we can do, on this world. Not most of us, anyway.”

“Do not Ascend,” the Winter Soldier said, seriously. “We did this. We regret it. We… what is left of us that matters could fit in a thimble. Not just one, our _entire race_. But we cannot touch. We cannot feel. We cannot _matter_. We… cannot die.”

“It’s not that I don’t sympathize,” Tony said, “but that’s going to scare the shit out of a lot of people here. They’re not going to want to hear about a race of immortal aliens who can just take people over whenever they feel like it, make us do things we don’t want to do, things we didn’t consent to, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Even if you don’t want to hurt anyone, we’re still not going to like it. We’re going to _find_ a way to fight back. That’s what we do. Check his memory for something called a _scorched earth policy_.”

“You will only hurt yourself,” the Winter Soldier said. He held out his hand again. “You have a heart defect, Tony Stark. We sensed it, when we held your hand. A _pacemaker_. Let us show you what we can offer.”

Tony sat back, startled. He tapped at his chest almost reflexively, feeling the weight of the implant there. “The healing thing, right.”

“We can repair it. As you say, _with your consent_. We will repair the heart, we will remove the pacemaker. You will not need it. There will be no pain. There will be no scars.”

And that would appeal to a lot of people. Millions. Even more would kill for the sheer strength the alien offered. “And now I’m imagining a war between the Vessels and the ones who refuse to be Vessels,” he murmured. Not to even mention the ones who _did_ want to be Vessels but weren’t -- the Winter Soldier had spoken of thousands or tens of thousands, but that was barely a drop in the bucket of the world’s population. “And the one who want to control the Vessels.” Enhanced humans with extraordinary strength and healing would make terrifying soldiers. Shock troops.

Tony rubbed at his face. “Of course, that assumes you’re actually telling the truth, and not just a... splintered personality.”

The Winter Soldier was watching, hand still extended. “Humans are very stupid.”

“You won’t get any argument from me about that, pal.” Tony looked at the Winter Soldier, looked down at the reaching hand. “Okay. Try me. Let’s see what you’ve got.” He reached out and took the Winter Soldier’s hand.

***

_Year 571 After Ascension, Mission Log 1990-23_

_The Vessels here are very young. And very stubborn. We are attempting to gain some understanding of them. There are more, so very many. We have never seen so many suitable Vessels. We could all have our own, if we can keep them from killing each other._

_We are exercising all due caution._

_Mostly._

The Winter Soldier moved, drawing Tony Stark with him until they sat on the floor. “We are leaving our Vessel and it is still asleep. It will hurt itself, if it falls. You are very fragile. We don’t want our Vessel to be harmed.”

The hand-to-hand contact wasn’t necessary, the Winter Soldier liked how it felt, the rough skin of Tony Stark against their own palm. The heat of another body. The way Tony Stark’s eyes crinkled up when it smiled.

_Him,_ Bucky said, a little blurry, waking up from the movement.

_We will be back,_ the Winter Soldier promised. _We are only proving ourselves. We will not leave you alone for long._

They gathered themselves up, a few thousand molecules of sentient string, really, a single quark thick in some places and exited their Vessel with a single thought, crossing the space between the Vessel Bucky and the Vessel Tony Stark.

There was no hiding themselves from Tony Stark, there was never any hiding from a Vessel. A Vessel would be alone in their own mind, and then, they weren’t.

_Tony Stark, we are here._

Bucky gasped, reaching for its heart, its head, staring around wildly. “Th’ hell?”

Tony Stark -- it thought of itself as simply _Tony_ \-- had a vastly more complex way of thinking than Bucky. It seemed to process information on multiple levels simultaneously in an utter cacophony of calculation and observation and consideration, turning every element of the situation over to see how the pieces might fit together.

_Give me a minute_ , it thought at the Winter Soldier, even as it reached out a hand to Bucky. “You’re okay, it’s all right.”

_You are very loud._ Tony found that funny.

The Winter Soldier focused inward; they did not need to watch what Tony was doing, they did not need to listen to what Tony was saying to Bucky. They needed to repair the Vessel and then leave this one. It was too loud, too busy. They _liked_ it, but they didn’t like it.

The basic layout of the Vessel was the same; glandular system here, open that up, flood the Vessel with the hormones and chemicals that made it feel good, made it feel happiness. Eased the nerves that were causing pain. The Winter Soldier got a flash of imagery, a tiny little plumber trying to fix a complicated and broken system of pipes.

_It is more complicated than that,_ they said, _but we are working on it. How do you feel?_

_Surprisingly good_ , Tony thought, still talking Bucky through what was happening.

Whatever Tony might think, they couldn’t really _read_ memories; only see those that were presented, as a part of the Vessel’s thought process. The Winter Soldier could trigger memories, sometimes, but memory was not as exacting and precise in most Vessels as they often believed.

_This may feel strange. We will try to shunt away any pain, but you must tell us immediately if you feel pain._

With all the good chemicals flooding the system, the pain dampener firmly in place, anything that registered on the Vessel’s nerves would be a great deal of damage. The Winter Soldier didn’t want to damage the Vessel.

They would have to move quickly. The Vessel’s heart was very badly damaged. They slipped inside the device, started breaking it down into molecules, atoms, that could be flushed out of the system through normal elimination procedures. Winter Soldier focused on the heart, rebuilding tissue and encouraging rapid growth of cells -- _cancer, is that cancer, what are you_ \-- sang them into being, filled the torn muscle and smoothed out the vascular systems.

_It is not a tumah._ A piece of a memory there, appropriate.

Tony laughed, startled, and then had to explain to Bucky that the Winter Soldier apparently had a sense of humor. Bucky’s expression conveyed doubt.

They finished the heart repairs, checked the structure for integrity. Did another sweep of the Vessel’s systems. Somewhat dehydrated, bad nutrition ratios. They triggered cravings, oranges, bananas, liver pate, milk. What did this Vessel eat, anyway? They found the start of an infection, soothed it away, killed off the bacteria without harming any of the necessary digestive bacteria colonies. Adjusted the shape of ocular systems, correcting a troubling vision problem for close work.

_We are done. We will leave you now, Tony._

Tony’s hand was on Bucky’s shoulder, comforting, bracing. _Wait, already? That’s-- Everything looks weird, why does everything look weird?_

_Your eyes were damaged. We repaired them._

_Okay but the deal was the heart, not--_

The Winter Soldier used the face to scowl. “We can put it back if you want. We cannot bring back the infection, though. We killed that.”

“Okay, that’s just disturbing, don’t-- don’t do that, that’s rude, just taking over like that. Show some respect.” Tony tugged the visual prosthetics off its face and looked around the room. “Son of a bitch. How about that.”

The Winter Soldier fled this too loud, too busy Vessel. A moment of the absolute silence between the Vessels to process, and then they moved back into Bucky. They liked Bucky. Bucky made sense. Bucky was comfortable.

_You ain’t think that, not at first,_ Bucky pointed out as the Winter Soldier settled in.

_You were uncooperative. We had many many days with our old Vessel. We were not used to arguing about whether or not we planned to breathe._

“We have _respect_ , Tony,” Winter Soldier used the mouth to say. “We have more respect for the Vessel that is Tony than you do. Do you even know what nutrients your Vessel needs to function properly? You are not at peak efficiency on so little sleep! You are too loud, and too busy.”

They didn’t want to take care of two Vessels. That seemed like both an utter luxury, to have a _choice_ of Vessels, and like _too much damn work_.

Bucky wrenched back control. “That weren’t me,” he protested.

***

_Year 571 After Ascension, Mission Log 1990-24_

_The Vessels that live here call themselves humans. There are rather a lot of them._

_As Vessels, they are remarkably gifted, brilliant, headstrong, opinionated. They have a wide range of feelings and experiences._

_They are not very cooperative. Exercise all due caution. They can exhibit extremely violent tendencies and hurt each other. Attached human historical documents on scorched earth policies, pyrrhic victories, and martyrs._

Tony rolled his eyes at the loud arguing taking place and decided he’d had enough. Bucky and the Winter Soldier, whatever problems they represented politically, were no more of a threat or a danger walking around the base than they were locked in the observation room. Tony walked over to the control console and disengaged the airlock-style doors.

“Stark,” Fury barked. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Nicky,” Tony sighed, “if it _really_ wanted out, it would have found a way out. Ripped the walls down. Ridden me. Hell, just _floated through the wall_ if it was willing to leave Barnes behind. It’s being very polite; the least we can do is show it a little courtesy.” He pushed past Fury and dragged the outer door open.

“We _like_ Bucky,” the Winter Soldier said. “We’re not going to hurt it.” The Winter Soldier-slash-Barnes kept close to Tony, reaching out to take his hand, or squeeze his shoulder, like they needed comfort or reassurance.

“Him,” Tony reminded the Winter Soldier. “Bucky is a _him_. Come on, let’s go down to the cafeteria and get you something decent to eat.”

“We don’t understand what that means,” the Winter Soldier protested. “Perfectly good designation pronouns. This language is complicated and unclear.”

“Uh.” Tony glanced over at the Winter Soldier and wondered if Bucky was trying to explain from the other side of their skull. “Pronouns are -- generally, not always, but usually -- indicative of gender or biological sex. Did you have that, back when you had bodies? Male, female? Methods of recombining DNA for future generations?”

The expressions on the Winter Soldier/Bucky’s face went through a kaleidoscope of emotions; exasperation and embarrassment (probably Bucky) to wonder, awe, curiosity, and a certain sly covetousness. “You _breed_? Make completely new Vessels? How? Show us.”

“Oh, for cripes’ sake, knock it off,” Barnes said, and it was obviously Barnes. “ _Ew_. They… they were, I dunno, like flatworms, maybe? When they’d get to the end of their lifespan, they’d make another one, out of the old cells. They lost the ability to intermingle, so there’s never any more of them, even when they had their own bodies. That’s… that’s before their memories.”

“We are not _ew_.”

“Evolutionarily dubious,” Tony opined. “What happens if a body gets destroyed before it can create a regenerated body? You’re talking about systemic entropy. On the other hand, creating a new body out of existing cells validates a lot of fanboys’ theories about _Doctor Who_.” Neither Bucky nor the Winter Soldier got that reference. Dammit. “If you don’t want to explain about the birds and the bees, Barnes, don’t worry, we’ll do a whole rundown on basic human biology at some point, I’m sure.”

“Not all paths lead to the same destination,” Winter Soldier said. “We knew we were doomed to extinction. We strove to find another solution. This. We left our world behind to fail without us. And now, we no longer matter.”

“You’re damn right, creepy alien ghost son of a bitch” someone said, someone Tony didn’t know, and he spun around to see someone in a SHIELD uniform raising a weapon, pointed directly at the Winter Soldier/Barnes’s head.

“No!” Tony lunged for the agent, shoving their arm upward even as the explosion of the shot rang out.

There were screams of pain, of rage. Something punched into Tony’s leg, sending him to the floor in agony. Nick Fury was down, but still alive. “Stand down, agent!”

The Winter Soldier stood there, almost calm, as bullets ripped into Barnes’s body, exploded in a splash of blood against the wall, healed like a goddamn special effect. A shimmer along one arm, and Winter Soldier raised an arm that was formed of metal, deflecting the remaining bullets until the terrified agent was dry-firing.

“You hurt them.” Barnes went slack for a moment, blinking, then the agent recoiled violently, hitting the wall.

“Sleep.” The agent slumped over.

_Do not move, Tony, we will repair you._

“Holy shit, holy shit, _holy shit_ ,” Barnes was saying, staring around. “Winter? Where--”

“I’ve got him,” Tony said roughly. He dragged up the leg of his pants. His leg was a mass of blood and -- splintered bone? Tony was no medical expert. He couldn’t feel much of anything, though, just an exhausted sort of ache. “He’s... fixing me.”

_Stupid projectiles. Messy. Inefficient._ There was almost a gnawing feeling to it, like a hundred little bugs were biting something inside him. Tony reached, involuntarily and the muscles screeched to a halt without his consent. _Do not. We have you. You are safe._ The bullet worked its way out of his skin, pushing back through the hole. A flash of wet heat and then he watched as his skin literally pulled itself back into place. A moment later, nothing was left of the wound at all, except the ragged leg of his trousers and the blood. _I am going to the next. Calm it._  

Tony was alone in his own head.

Tony looked around wildly. _The next?_ What the fuck did that--

One of the other agents was suddenly scrabbling at her clothes, expression panicked. “Hey!” Tony said, lurching to his feet and going to grab her shoulders. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s going to help, just relax, okay? Look at me, okay, focus on me.”

“It’s talking to me,” she panted, panicked. “It’s _inside_ me.”

Three bullets spit out of her skin so fast that they rang against the corridor floor, _ting ting ting_. She gasped, convulsed. “It doesn’t hurt, why… why doesn’t it -- _Sleep_. We don’t have time for this, others are injured.” She slumped against the wall, face going slack.

Tony lowered her carefully to the floor and then straightened up. “Listen up!” he yelled. “Everyone who’s injured, _stay calm_. Our visitor is trying to fix everyone up! Do not panic if you hear a voice in your head. It won’t be there for long! Say hi, let it know if you’re in pain, but don’t ask questions right now. Think of it as field triage and you’ll be fine!”

Barnes was still standing, poking gingerly at his left arm with his right. “This is… uh. new?”

Nick Fury coughed, vomited up a pool of blood and some very malformed bullets before sitting up to pant for breath.

Tony glanced around the room. None of the agents appeared to be panicking. A couple of them who were uninjured, or at least not badly, were seeing to the one who’d started the shooting. Tony made his way to Barnes, reaching out for the transformed arm. “What the hell did he do to you?”

“I ain’t… sure?” He rotated the left arm, stretched the fingers. It appeared to be fully articulated, functional. But it sure as hell wasn’t human. It was glittering black metal and gold-etched joins that wrapped around it like high tech veins. Several smashed bullets were on the floor in front of him. “Don’t hurt or nothin’.”

“We were in a hurry,” Winter said, from another agent’s mouth. “The arm was shattered, too many projectiles. Fully automated, six hundred rounds per minute. Would have torn you to pieces.”

The agent gagged, fell to her knees. “So fucking weird.”

“We improvised,” and that was from someone else’s mouth.

The last agent, bloody and unmoving continued to not move. The blood wasn’t gushing from the wounds, their lungs weren’t moving.

Fury bent over the fallen agent, touched his fingers to their throat. “Damn,” he grated. “Can’t bring back the dead, can you.”

There was a long silence as everyone looked around, various degrees of worry, wonder, and confusion.

“Is it… stuck in Agent Ward, sir?” one of the women asked. Agent Hand, by her ID badge. “Did it… is it dead?”

“I don’t think it can die, not like that,” Tony said. “Winter? Come on, he’s gone. You got everyone else. It’s time to go home. Get some rest.”

“We don’t like this place,” Winter said, suddenly, from Bucky’s mouth. “This is a terrible loss. Why… why would they do that? Why did they hurt each other?” Tears welled up and spilled down the Winter Soldier’s face. “We can’t fix it. Too badly damaged.”

Barnes blinked, wiped at his face with the heel of his right hand. “Jesus Christ.”

Tony slid an arm around Barnes’ shoulders. “Come on, let’s go find somewhere to get cleaned up and... sit.” It was his fault. If he hadn’t bulled his way through to releasing Barnes so quickly, the agents might have been better prepared. Or at least more thoroughly vetted. Grief weighed heavy, resting squarely on his shoulders.

***

_Year 571 After Ascension, Mission Log 1990-25_

_Our Vessel has been remanded to the care of Tony Stark. We haven’t quite figured out under whose authority Nicholas Fury acts. Our Vessel has, also, a limited understanding. Technology has advanced in the decades that it was held frozen on the moon and it describes itself --himself. We should use the proper descriptors. Describes himself as just a grunt with no real understanding or involvement in politics, even in his own time._

_We are planning to inform Tony Stark where he might find our old Vessel and the remains of our ship. These technological and biological treasures may be of some use._

_We continue to be curious about human reproduction, but information has been not forthcoming willingly. What little information we have acquired is contradictory and complicated. We will continue to investigate._

Tony opened a door and gestured grandly. “And here’s your room. Make yourselves at home, _mi casa es su casa_ , all that. If there’s anything you need or want, just let JARVIS know, he’ll make sure an order gets placed.”

“This might be th’ most extravagant cell t’ put me in while you prod and poke at me,” Bucky said, staring around. He wasn’t fooled. Fury’s directive “take care of this, Stark,” could mean anything, really, from _figure out how we’re all going to benefit from this_ to _find out how to kill the alien invaders._ Fury was smart, he was clever, and he realized pretty much right away that keeping Bucky -- and therefore the Winter Soldier -- at SHIELD was just asking for another incident.

They had to put a lid on aliens right now, or there was going to be global panic.

Bucky understood the reasons. And the room -- suite, really -- was nice.

But it was still a cage.

The Winter Soldier didn’t have anything to say. They were still curled up in the back of Bucky’s head like a terrified, grieving pillbug.

Tony rolled his eyes. “Look, I’m not going to say I don’t want to learn everything I can about your invisible friend, there, but I’m not going to strap you to a table and go all mad scientist. If we can convince him to keep a low profile about it, it’ll even be safe to let you out on the street. In the meantime...” He shrugged and waved his hands around. “I’m right upstairs, you’re welcome to stop by any time.”

“I can’t imagine strappin’ me down would do any good, and rather t’ be a little hard on your lab furniture,” Bucky said. “And it ain’t like you can leverage anything against them. Anything short of a direct hit with a fission emitter -- an’ I don’t even know what that _is_ \-- ain’t like to do squat. You got a lot of fancy doodads here in the future, but even your top end gear looks like a tinker-toy to them. All that, all that, and the thing that sticks with me? _They don’t want to hurt us_. They don’t need food, or air, or mineral rights. And Winter Soldier? They’re the only ones _here_. They don’t even know where the rest of the Ascended are. They can’t contact the Hive ship without their communications array, and that’s on the damn Moon where we left it.”

Tony held up his hands, _I surrender_. “I don’t want to hurt him. Them. It. Whatever. I don’t. He helped me out. Multiple times. I kind of like his enthusiasm and curiosity, he seems like a good guy. Really. I’m not the problem here. I’m trying to find a solution, something that doesn’t end with half the world burning.”

“We could just… go?” Bucky suggested, catching little bits of ideas from the Winter Soldier. Coupled with his own crazy, whirling thoughts. There wasn’t anything here for him; everyone he ever knew or cared about was dead. What little of New York he’d seen through the window of Tony’s care was crazy huge and new. Shiny. As alien to him as it was to the alien he carried inside.

“Go? Go where? Where would you-- You mean _go_? Back out there?” Tony waved in the general direction of _up_. “Okay, first of all, don’t think I’ve forgotten about Winter’s snide little _arbitrary speed of light_ crack, but I can guarantee that the technology does not exist to get you out of the solar system, much less anywhere he might actually want to go--”

“Yet,” Winter interrupted. The Ascended unrolled, interested in the conversation despite themselves. “We could build it. You… you could build it.”

Tony paused, mouth hanging open, and stared at them. “...Okay. Maybe. But then -- why? You’d be out there all alone again. Or -- yes, I know, not really _alone_ , you’re a pair. But humans need other humans. It’s a thing.”

It was really hard not to laugh as Tony talked himself all the way around the obvious. “If there was an invitation; point blank. How many people do you think would say ‘can I go, too’?”

Tony crossed his arms. “Huh. Okay. Okay, you’ve got me there, I have to... And yet, the whole idea was to keep this whole thing on the DL, to prevent the whole rioting in the streets thing. Hm. I’ll have to give that some thought.”

“We would have time, Tony,” the Winter Soldier said. _There really needs to be a better way to do this,_ Bucky thought _, than having you hijack my mouth all the time._ “Your planet has the resources, but we are, as you might say, going to have to rebuild the wheel. It will give us time to make selections, to learn about each other. To find people who will accept that they are needed, desperately needed, as Vessels. And to share, so completely, of another sapient. When we were healing, there were some who would have rather died than let us help them. We cannot subject our people to that sort of hatred.”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. He scratched at his face, thinking hard with that too-loud brain of his. “You’ll want a bunch of bonded pairs, probably,” he mused. “Or groups, or... at any rate, you’ll want willing breeders, or you’ll just run into the same problem over again in a hundred years.”

The Winter Soldier nodded. Bucky wasn’t sure they understood, so he added a few more mental pictures. His ma, hugely pregnant. Sisters and brothers. Family reunion in Brooklyn.

“Lots of logistics to consider, really. Like food. Your healing capabilities make healthcare sort of moot, but I’m pretty sure people still need to eat.” Tony was pacing, now, muttering to himself. “JARVIS, start up a new file on the private server, access restricted to the three of us. Call it the Ark Protocol.”

***

_Year 571 After Ascension, Mission Log 1990-47_

_Phase One of Ark Protocol continues to progress. A simple, adaptable nanotech armor, capable of conveying one Vessel safely to the lunar surface will launch in two cycles. Purpose, recovery of Winter Soldier’s ship and technology, as well as recovery of the old Vessel for biotech study and eventual internment. See attached files for more detail._

_Our Vessel continues to express interest in project leader, Tony Stark. Although we have become more educated about human reproductive systems as well as companionship and romantic interest, we still find all this very confusing. Our Vessel tells us to “join the club, pal.” We’re uncertain what requirements are for the club, but we continue to investigate._

Tony checked the nanite recharge rates. They seemed to be holding steady. As long as they had access to sunlight, the suit would remain fully powered. Without light, the suit was probably good for a solid eight to ten hours, unless he had to force multiple rapid re-configurations.

The Winter Soldier had assured him that its high-tech spaceship was in a spot with access to the sun, and that although the hull was damaged, the ship’s life support systems were still fully functional.

Tony was checking power consumption rates anyway. Better safe than sorry.

“Hey.” Over the last few weeks, as they’d worked together, Tony had learned to easily tell the difference between Bucky and the Winter Soldier. A way the shoulders went softer, or more mobility in the mouth. In any case, it took barely a glance to know that it was Bucky who was speaking, even though the Winter Soldier was always listening. Unlike Bucky, the Winter Soldier didn’t need sleep, although they enjoyed it as a recreational activity, and they could keep the body strong, even with limited rest. “We’re good to go, for launch, yeah?”

“Looks like,” Tony agreed, pushing away the monitor with the data readouts. “You doing okay?”

“Uh, was flippin’ through the television-- that thing is damn amazin’, you know, but man, some of th’ things it shows, I ain’t even half kiddin’ when I-- like, makes th’ peep shows me and my pal used to go to an’ spend a dime, look _tame_.” There was a pinkish blush creeping up Bucky’s neck.

Tony laughed. “Yeah, I bet. Need help explaining something to our friend?” That had happened a couple of times. At some point, Bucky had filled the Winter Soldier in on the mechanics of human reproduction, but Winter’d had _questions_ , and Bucky had gratefully ceded the floor to Tony’s somewhat greater experience and entire lack of shame.

“They’ve definitely moved past the whole mommy and daddy scenario,” Bucky admitted. “An’ they kinda wondered why I ain’t… got one. A mate, a… you know, a wife, or a dame. And why I never had one, an’... you know how they get when they start wonderin’ about a thing. And they were just… needling at me, an’ I uh, happened to say it outloud. So, then your… your JARVIS fella, he tells me somethin’ interesting, and I’m not sayin’ he’s not telling me the truth, but…” Bucky glanced up at Tony, that flush brick red now. “Is, uh… it’s not illegal no more, to be queer?”

“Well, not here, anyway,” Tony agreed. “There’s some backwards-thinking countries still out there, and we’ve got a long way to go as far as acceptance is concerned, but no, it’s not illegal to be gay now.” He reached out an arm, patted Bucky on the shoulder. “Do we need to explain _that_ to Winter?”

“No, I think they got the whole sex for pleasure, not necessarily for makin’ babies,” Bucky said, and then he blushed again. “He was wonderin’ then, why I ain’t…”

“-- we wish to know--”

“Stop it! I said I’d do it, now let me--”

“You are taking too long.”

“You’re _immortal_! What d’you care--”

Tony leaned back a little, eyeing Bucky and Winter curiously. “Where is this headed, guys?”

“They… uh, wanna piggyback on me while, I… you know. Now that they’ve figured out that I ain’t into dames.” Bucky shunted his eyes down and at the floor. “An’ you and them, you’re both. You could… anything could happen. I… I could lose both of you.”

Tony wasn’t quite _shocked_ , not after all that adorably embarrassed lead-in, but it was certainly a heck of a rush to hear it. To imagine it. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about it. Bucky was a hell of a good-looking guy, and Winter’s protective earnestness was endearing.

And there were definitely better ways to spend the time before launch than obsessively checking and re-checking all their calculations. Tony shut down the simulator with a wave, then rolled to his feet.

Bucky was a bit taller than Tony, but with his eyes focused fast on the floor, he almost didn’t spot Tony’s hands coming up to cup his face. When his gaze flicked up to meet Tony’s, Tony closed the rest of the space between them, brushing his lips over Bucky’s, a gentle query.

“Oh, Christ,” Bucky swore. He licked at his lips tentatively, then with an almost strangled, too-eager gasp, his mouth came down on Tony’s. His lips were plush, very soft, tongue moving hesitantly over Tony’s mouth, tempting him to open up. And thrust inside, hungry, urgent, his hands twining around Tony’s back and pulling him in, bending him backward just a little.

Tony clung to Bucky’s shoulders -- Winter wouldn’t let Bucky drop him -- and kissed back for all he was worth. When they parted to gasp for breath, Tony managed, “Not here. I have stuff in my room.”

“You’re uh, yeah,” Bucky said, a little dazzled. “Your room. Sure thing.” He took Tony’s hand, linked his fingers with Tony’s. “Back… back in my day, this could-- get me jailed, or even killed. Jus’ sayin’ it. An’ the only way out of it, if you got busted, was t’ turn in five of your own. I can’t tell if I’m excited or terrified. Bit of both, I guess.”

“No need to be afraid,” Tony promised. “Hell, even if it _were_ still illegal, this is my place, no one’s going to find out what’s happening if we don’t want them to.” He used their joined hands to tug Bucky toward the stairs. “How much, ah, practical experience have you got, here?”

“I ain’t wet behind th’ ears,” Bucky said. “You could always find-- if you knew where to look.”

The Winter Soldier added, “he was paid--”

“I _told_ you not to mention that,” Bucky protested, interrupting himself, which was always weird and amusing. “Jesus, ain’t you got no shame?”

“No?” The Winter Soldier asked, puzzled. “We are not ashamed of you. You should not be _ashamed_.”

“No shame needed,” Tony agreed. “Just want to make sure we’re on the same page, here.” He pushed through the door to his bedroom, then pushed Bucky up against it as soon as it closed, tipping his chin up for another of those searing kisses, rolling his body against Bucky’s.

Bucky’s hands wandered down Tony’s back, cupped Tony’s ass and pulled him even closer. “You’re so damn gorgeous,” Bucky murmured. “An’ I’m gettin’ used to the damndest things, but it… you know it’s all of us, right? They ain’t turnin’ their head an’ lookin’ the other way.”

“We want to know all of it,” the Winter Soldier said, and when they kissed Tony, there was a decided difference, a soft delight to the way those same lips moved, the way they pressed a tongue to Tony’s lip, tasted it, and came back for more. “We want to know what it’s like to be kissed by you, and what it’s like to kiss _as_ you.”

Tony shivered a little, but it wasn’t bad. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I want... I want all of it.” He ducked his head, mouthing along the underside of Bucky’s jaw. “So beautiful, so _brave_ ,” he sighed, and scraped his teeth over the vein in Bucky’s neck. “Want to make it good for you. What do you like?”

Bucky didn’t answer immediately, just took possession of Tony’s mouth again, kissing him like he was coming home, desperate and hot. His hands went into Tony’s hair, and then--

The Winter Soldier didn’t say anything, but Tony was suddenly aware of their presence, humming happily inside Tony’s head, soaking in the experience from the other side. And at the same time remembering and reflecting on what Bucky felt and experienced. Like looking into an endless hall of mirrors and seeing them both, over and over again. Amplifying Tony’s pleasure, knowing, feeling, how much Bucky had been pleased by it.

What had started out as a kiss, a good kiss, maybe even a great kiss, became something somehow transcendent.

Bucky pulled back with an intake of air. “God,” he choked out, touching his mouth with his fingertips, then brushing a thumb along Tony’s lower lip. “How-- how the hell am I s’posed to ever get along without you _now_?”

“It’ll only be a few days,” Tony promised. He caught Bucky’s hand and brought it back to his mouth, kissing his fingertips, nipping at the pads of them. “But we’ll miss you, too.”

“You will?” Bucky met his gaze, almost shy, a delighted smile peeking out. “Take us t’ bed, an’ let us see you? We want-- I want…”

“We want,” the Winter Soldier echoed, back in Bucky. “ _We_ want you.”

“You’ve got me,” Tony agreed. He stepped back, keeping Bucky’s hand in his, tugging them along. He didn’t let go until his knees hit the bed, and then he stripped off his shirt with a twist and a yank, and went to work on his pants. “However you want me.”

It seemed that Winter took the reins for a while, exploring Tony’s body with hands and mouth as if they’d never really known a human body before. Certainly they had never loved another human before. They might have been getting a little direction from Bucky; toward zones where Tony was more likely to respond to a questing tongue or gently stroking fingers.

Tony hadn’t realized that, for instance, the inside of his elbow was particularly sensitive, or that fingers trailed against the back of his knee made him wriggle and squirm. The Winter Soldier didn’t appear to have any goal in mind, just touching and kissing Tony, making him sigh or shiver was enough to bring a pleased smile to their face.

“Here,” Bucky said, “let me show you something--”

And Bucky took over their body, slithered down between Tony’s legs and licked the length of Tony’s cock, from balls to head in a single wet stripe.

“Oh _fuck_ ,” Tony cursed, and his hand closed over Bucky’s head, wrapping the soft strands of hair around his fingers. “Oh my god.”

The Winter Soldier passed into Tony again, puzzled at first, why this motion, why that pressure, and then they were practically dancing with delight as Bucky licked, sucked, stroked Tony with his mouth, let Tony thrust up into that wet heat. The Winter Soldier spread their awareness to every edge of Tony’s skin and then-- did something, for just a moment Tony was conscious of his entire body as a series of chemical systems, and Winter… pushed something, pulled something else.

Every nerve ending on Tony’s skin went haywire. Double, _triple_ the sensitivity, impossible to measure as the Winter Soldier opened Tony up from the inside, and then settled in to enjoy the ride.

Tony couldn’t even curse or beg; he could barely keep _breathing_ , as intense as even the smallest movement felt. The sheets under his skin, the silken feel of Bucky’s hair in his grasp, the softest puff of Bucky’s breath on him, everything was beyond amazing, was better than the best sex Tony had ever had, was more engulfing than any drug. He could only writhe and gasp and moan, barely able to tighten his grip as he raced toward climax and gasp, “I’m, I’m almost--”

The Winter Soldier rode out the orgasm with him, feeling it, experiencing it, and then moved, and then back. Tony could feel the last jolts of it at the same time that the memory of his own taste in Bucky’s mouth lingered on his tongue, the way Bucky was feeling the echo of Tony’s own release.

Barely a breath later and Bucky was laying on top of him, rutting eagerly against Tony’s thigh. “Need-- need you, honey,” he gasped. And Winter was still cycling between them, a frantic, dizzying array of emotion, lust, longing-- echoes and mirrors and reflections. “Touch us.”

Tony did, pushing Bucky back down onto the bed and rolling over half on top of him, looking his fill of Bucky’s lean, muscular form. Tony wrapped his hand around Bucky’s gorgeous cock and squeezed carefully, testing, watching Bucky’s face. Twisted his hand, smearing the beaded precome over the head. Stroked his thumb down the sensitive spot behind the head. Bucky’s expression was a miracle, half-stunned with pleasure -- Winter was almost certainly playing tricks on Bucky’s nerves, too -- and wide-eyed with trust and affection and need. “God, you’re gorgeous,” Tony hummed, dipping down to kiss Bucky again, pulsing his tongue through Bucky’s lips in rhythm with the movements of his hand.

Bucky’s hips worked, his eyes rolled back and he arched up, screaming into Tony’s mouth as he came, gushing wet and warm over Tony’s fingers and splattering against his belly.

“Holy _hell_ ,” Bucky gasped, and fell back against the bed, panting for air.

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. He’d had enough time to recover to make it possible to reach for a tissue to wipe off his hand and Bucky’s stomach, but he couldn’t really be bothered to go much further. He dropped down to the bed and curled up against Bucky’s side. “I don’t think I’ve come that hard in... _ever_.”

Bucky made a huffing sort of agreement. “I, uh, yeah, won’t be able t’ get it up for days, after that. Just lay here, that sounds _great_.”

Winter cycled through again, staying a little longer, wrapping themselves up in Tony’s post coital haze. _Why not?_

Tony hummed and gave Winter a slightly sleepy-hazy precis on male anatomy and the refractory period. _He’s exaggerating,_ Tony explained, _but yeah, we need some time to recover._

_That seems pointless. We don’t like that._

Tony managed a weak chuckle. In response to Bucky’s sleepy _hm?_ he said, “Winter doesn’t care for the idea of a refractory period.” He grinned against Bucky’s skin. “Maybe he should’ve found a female Vessel.”

“I didn’ make the system, I jus’ use it. Biology is fact.”

_Biology is_ a _fact. We can alter facts. We can alter biology._ There was a brief pause, then, cautiously, _we can do it again. If you want to._ Tony felt a dim heat, and a throb in his groin that signalled a stirring of interest and his weariness slowly peeled away, like he’d gotten a cup of super strong espresso. A triple shot. With none of the weird hypermania that sometimes went along with an overdose of caffeine.

Tony blinked. He looked down the length of his body, which was apparently very much in favor of this “again” plan. “Um. Well. I’m not... opposed.”

Bucky spluttered out a laugh. “Well, that’s a perk,” he said, trailing one finger down Tony’s stomach. “Hmmm?”

Tony grinned at him. “I guess it’s time for another round of education for Winter.”

***

_Year 571 After Ascension, Mission Log 1990-172_

_As phase four of the Ark Protocol closes, we find ourselves desperately hoping that we can deliver everything we have promised. The flight path moves the ark through projected intercepts along the last known Hive whereabouts. Space, as an Earth philosopher said, is very, very big. But, with rotating hibernation periods, the ark can search wide swaths of the quadrant, and still keep a steady genetic variation._

_Alternative plans have been formed for several small colonies of humans each with a minimum of a hundred and sixty Vessels, should it become necessary, to grow on certain “goldilocks” planets as indicated in attachments to this document._

_Frozen embryos for certain human livestock and helper animals, along with a variation of edible seeds and root vegetables are stored in the Ark for distribution as needed._

_Our plans are set. It remains to be seen, now, if they can come to fruition. Certain segments of the human population are not in favor of the attempt, even though the loss of fifty thousand Vessels on a planet that contains billions, hardly affects them. Violent outbreaks have been repulsed, as multiple attempts have been made to force the project to a halt._

_We love individual humans. They are brilliant and emotional and exciting and compassionate._

_We do not like masses of humanity. A person is smart._ People _are dumb, panicky dangerous animals._

The Ark hovered over Manhattan the exact way that bricks didn’t.

Dozens of smaller crafts flittered between the landing point on Stark Tower and the docking bay of the Ark. Mobs of rioters surrounded the tower, kept out by the Winter Soldier’s cleverly designed shields, but it was still painful, Bucky thought, to watch them there.

Some desperate to keep the Travelers home, some desperate to join them.

“Heard a story once,” Bucky said, looking down, “that when _Oliver Twist_ was bein’ writ, people would gather on the docks to storm the publisher’s ships. That people would drown, pushed off the edge of the dock by the crowds, died. Trying to be the first to read about a young orphan’s adventures in thievin’. I can’t decide if this-- shows how far we come, or how far we got left t’ go.”

Tony slipped an arm around him, kissed his shoulder. “It won’t matter for much longer,” Tony said. “Once we’re gone, things will level out again. They’ll mourn or rage or whatever they need to do, and then they’ll move on without us. As it should be.”

“When your dad came to me, all those years ago,” Bucky said, although for him, it wasn’t all that long ago, a little more than three years, when he was selected as the final candidate for the _Selene_ mission, “he said I was gonna lead men to the stars. That’s so true, in a way he never could have imagined.”

“Thanks, in a large part, to Tony,” the Winter Soldier added. “ _Loud_. And _busy_. And _beloved_.”

“And none of us need ever be alone again,” Tony promised.

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1936-magic-number-for-space-pioneers-calculated/ -- some interesting theory that we found while researching.


End file.
